(Transcript from World News Radio)
There are concerns changes to Queensland electoral laws could disenfranchise tens-of-thousands of the state's most marginalised voters.
The amendment requires all voters to present personal identification and some argue that could mean many Indigenous, elderly, disabled and homeless people miss out on exercising their right to vote.
And as Thea Cowie reports, there are concerns the Queensland voter ID requirements could have wider implications.
Under the new laws, acceptable forms of voter ID include a driver's licence, an electricity bill, a passport, a medicare or pensioner's concession card.
But Labor member for the far-north Queensland parliament seat of Mulgrave, Curtis Pitt, says a large number of his Indigenous constituents may still fail to meet the requirements.
"If you don't drive a car, if you don't travel overseas and you're not the account holder of your electricity bill - then there's every chance you won't have the appropriate identification. I understand that there will be situations where people say 'well surely everyone has power on at their house of course they're going to have an electricity bill.' Well certainly in many Indigenous communities there are significant over-crowding issues so a person may not be an account holder or even be a fulltime occupant of that house. So the legislation is going to disenfranchise many, many people. Not just Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, but people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds generally."
Mr Pitt is one of the few Queensland Labor MPs to have held his seat at the 2012 election.
His concerns are shared by over 160 individuals and organisations that made submissions to the state government opposing the proof of identity provisions.
Among them was Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Mick Gooda.
He says many Indigenous people fall into a "vicious cycle" where the lack of a birth certificate prevents them from getting other forms of identification, but they can't get a birth certificate in the first place, because they can't satisfy the identification requirements for one.
Social Science Research Fellow at the University of Queensland, Tracey Arklay says homeless people, migrants and disabled voters are most likely to be among the thousands of Australians without sufficient ID.
"According to the Australian Electoral Commission who did a review in 2007, they claim that 1.5 per cent of Australians don't have any form of voter ID, if that is trasferred to Queensland - and that's 1.5 per cent - that's around 40,000 people that don't have any form of ID and that's a lot of people who may be disenfranchised."
Queensland's Attorney-General was not available for an interview, but in a statement to SBS says maintaining the integrity of the state's electoral system is vital.
It says proof of identity will prevent voter impersonation.
In parliament, Queensland government members have pointed to last year's federal election in which there were 19,000 cases of people casting multiple ballots.
Police investigated 128 of those cases.
The Australian Electoral Commission says over 80 per cent of people who voted more than once were elderly, had poor literacy skills, or had a low comprehension of the electoral process.
Emily Howie from the Human Rights Law Centre says she thinks fraud is not the real reason for changing the laws.
"In the absence of evidence it's hard to see how this isn't politically-motivated. The evidence overseas is that the people who are marginalised by these laws are people who are more likely statistically to vote left wing."
Ms Howie says 34 jurisdictions within the United States have introduced voter ID laws and the evidence is they don't stop voter fraud, but they do stop disadvantaged people voting.
"One of the greatest proponents of these laws - Justice Posner of the United States Court of Appeals - who once said that these laws were necessary to prevent voter fraud, has since then come out publically and said that these aws actually suppress the vote of marginalised people and that they don't address voter fraud. Had he had this evidence ten years ago when he made these laws he would have made a very different decision. We don't need to go down that path in Australia."
The University of Queensland's Dr Arklay says she fears the Queensland law may be a sign of things to come across the country.
"In an era where we've got a lot of people who are already disinterested in government, a lot of people will find this impost too hard and probably will stay away on the day of that vote. That might mean in future, it won't happen straight away, but in future it might allow governments to say 'look this many people don't turn up, therefore we should get rid of our compulsory voting system.' There's a whole lot of potential things that might flow onto this. Might it be adopted more widely in Australia?"
Chair of the federal government's Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, Tony Smith, is on the record as a strong supporter of voter ID.
He says statistics show the system is vulnerable to electoral fraud.
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